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Daniel,
I don't think my Sensei would object, but if I were talking to a potential student who stated their main goal was as yours, I would not encourage Aikido. Sorry I wasn't the person you talked to before starting, because it would have saved you the time.

Yours is not the kind of job I'd want to have. Luckily, I only have to be concerned with the much lesser chance of being attacked by a stranger on the street. Although, as an auditor, I suppose threats may be forthcoming. For that reason, I train with and carry a gun. But I know that isn't an option in the UK. I also sure as heck don't do Tai Chi to be able to protect myself.

Hi!, As you bothered to write your goodbye at some length, it suggests you are looking for some kind olive branch from aikido, a way to show you Aikido can work?. I am only a 5th kyu and a very rusty one, as I left over 8 yrs ago, to concentrate on Wado Karate. I am 1st Dan now. Krav Maga is by it's own admittance a hybrid system, however, all arts are hybrid, then become traditional as time passes. Working in security as you do is not the same as all out fighting, as in security ,restraint and close up work is needed rather than punching etc. Legal eagles would take a dim view of security people punching or kicking clients, even if your situation had put you in that position. Try keeping Aiki as your core art, and by all means train in other styles to supplement. Aiki is longevity, maybe long after you give up security, Aiki has a heritage, and if you could interview O'Sensei, could you look him in the eye with your queries?. Your Aiki teacher may not supply you with what you need as your aims will differ from average student!. However Aiki roots are in the battlefield are they not?. Aiki training has weaknesses , such as constant emphasis on wrist grabs, compliance etc. Hoever, its strengths are tai sabaki body movement, trying to turn your opponent, ukemi, multiple attack randori, defence against knives, attacking the attack with you entry movement etc. The video supplied reinforces in my eyes aiki has answers to all those attacks. Away from Aiki, you can look at Geoff Thompson of the BCA, who teaches everything from fear control, to all out training, but even he and his peers will always return to traditional for the core principles. Cross training may be your answer, for punching as your back-up, or kicking or groundwork, but again i would keep Aiki as your core style. My own plans are to return to Aikido myself. Cheers!.

No, it's been debated inconclusively on a bunch of different forums. I'm certainly not claiming to have any definite knowledge of it, one way or the other. Do a web search, read some opinions. And call your optometrist to have that bad case of "Evil eye" checked out.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration...

ah, actually, any of the more informed sites pretty much concluded that type of claim is bunk. Check aikidojournal.com and e-budo for some reasonable threads on Ueshiba and any possibilities of him actually training in Chinese arts while in Manchuria.

Spreading that kind of rumor here just adds to the problem.

Best,
Ron

Ron Tisdale
-----------------------
"The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of his behind."
St. Bonaventure (ca. 1221-1274)

I've been a law enforcement officer for twenty four years, and started aikido before I began my law enforcement career. i've used aikido and aikido techniques successfully many times. I have also been unsuccessful in applying aikido techniques at times as well.

I have also trained in another of other martial arts as well, and have used some of those art's techniques as well. Through hands on experience trying to control people in real life, I've learned what works for me, and when, and what hasn't worked for me. I thing each martial art that I have studied has it's strong points and weak points. There are some scenarios where I think aikido is very effective, and some where it's going to be very difficult to apply. For example, I have used sankyo dozens of times on drunks that are not responding to verbal commands. Now, I have trained a long time, but a lot of the cops I work with have received much less training than even a relative beginner in aikido like yourself, and I have seen them use sankyo successfully as well.

Now, when I put sankyo on a drunk, I have to grab his arm and get the wrist control on him before his addled mind can figure out what's going on. So I've learned to do it pretty fast. Still, a lot of times, the other person is going to feel the wrist control coming. Peoples natural reaction when you are trying to apply a control hold to their arm or wrist, is to pull the arm away and lock it against their body. When that happens, it is going to be pretty difficult to apply an aikido technique, but applying a judo technique is very simple. Judo is very well designed to deal with people pulling their arms into their bodies and tightening up. So if I miss the sankyo and the person pulls his arms in, I sweep their leg with an osoto gari and take them to the ground. I have done this many times as well, and I learned how to do this by trial and error in real struggles.

It's also very easy to justify this combination in terms of an escalation of force. So my report would read something like, "X failed to obey my verbal commands, so at that point I took control of his right arm to attempt to apply a control hold. X violently pulled his arm away from me, preventing my application of the control hold. I then swept his right leg with my right leg and brought him to the ground, where I was able to gain control of him." This gives his lawyer very little ammunition to use against me in a excessive force complaint.

If someone is coming at me trying to hit me, it's not the time to try and find a wrist technique, though I did pull off a kote gaeshi once. Generally when people have been trying to hit me I have had to respond with strikes with my hands or knees, or an impact weapon. But what a lot of people don't realize about strikes is that it people don't just fall down when you hit them once or twice, like in the video you posted. When I hit someone now I am always trying to hit them at an angle where I will knock them down. Sometimes I find it, and sometimes I don't. But some of the striking arts that promise that a strike or two will win the fight, like your video with multiple attackers where the defender hits one guy, who is then incapacitated and falls down, and the other attackers run away, doesn't exactly correspond with my real life experience. My experience is when you have to overcome someone by hitting them, it is usually a very prolonged and bloody experience.

And whenever I have been involved in this kind of thing the attacker frequently makes a complaint of excessive force. They always remember you hitting them, but seem to magically forget they started off hitting you.

So, anyway, in my experience, control holds such as sankyo and rear wrist locks (nikkyo variation) work well if you can get them on before the fight starts. Judo techniques work well when you are struggling with someone and you are holding on to each other, which actually seems to happen a lot. (We tend to grab onto people a lot in police work.) When someone is coming at you with strikes, striking in return is going to be the simplist way to go. I have gotten behind people with an irimi nage type entry, but have ended up bear hugging them from behind, I've never gotten off a classic irimi nage, probably because in real life the ma-ai is too short.

Last of all though, if you want your aikido to be more effective, you have to try and train realistically. If your dojo does everything slow motion, it's going to be hard to get much realism there. I am a big believer that if one martial art doesn't meet your needs or make you happy, go find another one. So I fully support your desire to go try different martial arts, I think that is a very good idea. But if you decide you want to come back to aikido, I would suggest finding a dojo where they train faster and more realistically. There are dojos out there that do. And last of all, my opinion is that the only way to make your martial art practise truly realistic is to actually use it in real life and learn for yourself what works and doesn't. It seems to me that you are already well along the way there. Good luck in your training.

I'm about 8 months into my aikido training. I came to aikido after a lifetime of kicking and punching. In fact even before I was trained I had a really good aptitude for street fighting.

Please do not take this the wrong way. I'm going to speak to you just like one of my early instructors did after I lost a fight in the street.

Daniel you are a giant dummy!

No fighting art is going to help you. Not until you figure out how not to be in the way of punches and attacks. The John Doe throwing the back hand at you is going to do it you time after time. You know that!!!.It's a natural truth for that kind of person. That's why you're dummy...

I think that the two Peter's comments are very useful to everyone, especially Peter Rall's.

I want to take up Aikido cos I want to at least do something that is going to help my with my coordination and reflexes that will help me in my old age.

The only thing I am bothered about, is that, at every point, I want to have a realistic idea of what I am capable of in a real fight. I don't want to go out and get creamed.

I've noticed, for every five Aikido clips I watch on the internet, it's good to watch one hapkido or judo clip, to balance. Ueshiba's clips are good, too. Everything else is derivative. He was well versed in other arts before he came to Aikido, but I think I would like to start off with Aikido first, then try some Judo or something.

I want to have a realistic idea of what I am capable of in a real fight.

You will never know this until you are in a fight... The mental and physical conditions (both the positive and the negative) that occur in a fight (not to mention the stakes) are impossible to faithfully reproduce in the dojo. You can train to be prepared, and that makes good sense, but only being is truly knowing...

I've never had that problem. I am total Aikido. No additives, no supplements, no preservatives. I insist that I learn all my self-defense the aikido way and have been very satisfied.

Perhaps it's because I only have experience with Shodokan, (Tomiki), Aikido.

In my dojo within the first 3 weeks I was thrown into multiple attackers, free style, tanto randori. (That means alternating attacks with fake knives by two attackers for those of you who are unsure). The free style ment any attack was valid -- slashing, overhand stabs, underhand stabs, angles, etc. I did okay. Yes I got stabbed a coulple of times...by the intial attack or by the other attacker when I had successfully subdued the initial attacker. (Very Hhumbling)..

The point is and the point my instructor was trying to make is that my aikido needs to be tested at as near full speed uke and I could safely get. This help me correct my techniques and showed weekness in the application and understanding of a technique ie back to the drawing board.

So, I am quite perplexed by all of the questions about will aikido work in a fight or how come we don't practice at faster speeds because I was doing it within three weeks. We do learn all of our techniques slowly where correct application and smoothness is emphasized but it get's tested weekly.

If the other aikido schools are not testing their aikido then I would question the effectiveness of their techniques also. Why aren't you testing your aikido? Even if you are not doing tournaments like Shodokan Aikido you should still test your aikido. Can you apply that technique under stress? What if your first technique doesn't work?

And oh, that's another soar subject of mine.
I NEVER expect my first technique to work thats why we are taught to feel where ukes Ki is flowing and to change the technique or goto another one. Some of my friends call it a counter some call it a reverse. I guess it's because your reversing your Ki to match ukes. Shomenate is my favotite goto.
I suggest you look into some shodokan schools before leaving but it's your choice. For me; after studing other martial arts, it's all aikido for me no additive or preservative.

Your goals seem to require that you find a different art and quite frankly may require that you find a different job. Busting heads as a bouncer will get you fired, sued and possibly killed.
I studied a "hard" style of martial arts for 20 years prior to starting Aikido, did a lot of sparing and introduced my share of individuals to the "pavement"
I'm older now and I'm smarter now. I know I can put people to the "pavement" but honestly I would prefer to help them up now rather than put them down.
I guess if I started with Aikido I might have felt as you do. Your a young man you should probrably venture elsewhere, who knows you may find yourself returning at a later time. Aikido will still be here and we will welcome your return.. Good luck

I thought the phrase was "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit...", which I always felt was harsh - better some wit than half a wit.

I have to side with Roman here - two wild assertions provided third hand from unknown parties with no attempt to even provide substantiation and you expect to be taken seriously?

If you're not just trolling you may want to re-think how you present your facts. I'd probably suggest bullshido for a nice gentle introduction into the art of the martial art anecdote followed by the more robust e-budo for final polishing.

I've never seen it myself, but I believe that it can happen. I've seen how fast some people can move. There's a bloke in my town who was in court for beating two people up. It was in the Gazette.

Isn't Aikido the one that teaches you hoe to take on multiple opponents? Don't all Martial arts at the highest levels? What's that all about? Is it all myth? The Bloke at my local dojo told me he had to take on two for his second dan.

Mr Kremianski, for someone with so little experience, 3rd kyu as of March 2007, you sure push the envelope...the beauty of the keystroke,eh?

I have fought more than one individual at once...cuffed two and pummeled the third...there were two of us and nine of them...needless to say the Aikido played an supporting role, but atemi,atemi,geri and more atemi, sure kept both of us standing. One of many war stories.

Michael, I know I'm not Roman but I do agree with his position - there's a big difference between the following two statements -

"I have a TKWD friend who told me he knew someone who..." and
"I know an ex-heavyweight boxer who told me..."

and your own

"I have fought more than one individual at once.."

The first are mere anecdotes with no real way of being measured for their reality (unlike Carls third option which was "It was in the Gazette." which tantalized us with the possibility of third-party corroboration).

With your own post you are in effect acting as the foundation for the truth of the statement which as I'm convinced you're a fine upstanding aikidoka I'm going to accept at face value.

It wasn't so much the fact that multiple attackers can be defeated, but the "evidence" provided which provoked Roman's mirthful response - Roman you horrible little kyu grade, remember humour and martial arts don't mix

I don''t remember calling anyone here a liar. An old dude beating up 3 burly bouncers DOES sound like something out of Karate Kid. It's the first thing that came to my mind. I have this funny feeling many will agree. And it's also kinda humorous on it's own, once you get over the Aikido pride and the insulted Aikidoka with a chip on their shoulder.

The beauty of the keystroke? I am using my real full name here, along with me real dojo.Yes, I'm 3rd kyu in Aikido. I trained in Aikido for 2.5 years and that's the rank I achieved. Shortly following that, I left to experience other arts. Nothing really to hide there, as a simple google search of my dojo and a glance at our grading list will tell you. I hold no significance in the Aikido world, just a pocket of my personal experience that I sometimes share under my real identity on a respectable internet forum. Everything that comes out of me is the opinion of a young college student, not a shihan...since when did you have to hold a certain kyu before you can comment?

Stories don't impress me. I spar with guys who've knocked opponents out while competing in professional MMA. I hold no significance in that world either, just like in Aikido, I dove in as a young guy to learn and suck up the knowledge around me. Here is a story: I got 5 stitches bellow the right eyebrow after getting slammed by a skilled wrestler. Learned a lot from it.

So yes, there are real situations, and there are stories, but that's still all they are. People here need to relax.

Why am I still here? Because I've trained in Aikido, am interested in Aikido, and am curious about the opinions of other Aikidoka. If I really didn't care, I'd just be on Bullshido.

"Video or it didn't happen" isn't the end all...but it really is one step above "A friend of mine told me..."